Funny Weather is a collection of essays by Olivia Laing, focusing on art, artists, and their cultural significance. The book features a mix of profiles, personal narratives, and cultural criticisms, addressing the role of art in society, especially during times of crisis. Laing's writing style is described as strong and lucid, with an engaging blend of literary biography and personal reflection.
The essays range from well-known artists like Basquiat and O’Keeffe to more obscure figures, often touching on deep emotional themes and societal issues. Each piece is insightful, although some critiques mention that the book does not fully deliver on its promises of defending art in chaotic times. Overall, Laing's work showcases her passionate belief in the power of art while inviting readers to explore the connections between creativity and resilience.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The book contains discussions of trauma, mental health, and political and social crises.
From The Publisher:
"One of the finest writers of the new nonfiction" (Harper's Bazaar) explores the role of art in our tumultuous modern era.
In this remarkable, inspiring collection of essays, acclaimed writer and critic Olivia Laing makes a brilliant case for why art matters, especially in the turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century.
Funny Weather brings together a career's worth of Laing's writing about art and culture, examining their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O'Keeffe, reads Maggie Nelson and Sally Rooney, writes love letters to David Bowie and Freddie Mercury, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, she celebrates art as a force of resistance and repair, an antidote to a frightening political time.
We're often told that art can't change anything. Laing argues that it can. Art changes how we see the world. It makes plain inequalities and it offers fertile new ways of living.
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